World Will Need “Carbon Sucking” Technology by 2030s, Scientists Warn

Scientists say that large-scale projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be needed by the 2030s to hold the line against climate change: many new technologies that aim to capture and store carbon emissions, thereby delivering “negative emissions”, are costly, controversial and in the early phase of testing. But “if you’re really concerned about coral reefs, biodiversity [and] food production in very poor regions, we’re going to have to deploy negative emission technology at scale,” said Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, a science and policy institute.

World leaders agreed in 2015 an aim of holding global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times. Scientists believe this is key to protecting small island nations from sea level rises, shoring up food production and preventing extreme weather. Carbon-sucking technologies may even be needed to hold the planet to a less ambitious two degrees of warming, said scientists at Chatham House, a British thinktank. The world has already seen an average of about one degree of warming, they said.

That said, the science is still very much out if CO2 actually is a contributor to global warming. Before ANYONE protest, I did the research as to why they think it might be the main contributor. It's still an unproven hypothesis because they think CO2 increase has a direct correlation to more cloud cover and reflected IR waves back to the earths surface. This is based on Venus (which has an entirely different atmosphere/gravity) and simulations of CO2 on a computer on how it carries particulates, and ice core studies. The core studies have been proven wrong as CO2 continued to increase for long periods during earth cooling.

OTEC, nuff said. Cool the ocean's surface and bring up nutrients for Phytoplankton which absorb most of the CO2 in the atmosphere producing more biomass per cubic mile of seawater.

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You just need a fleet of plume boats. All the tech is already there, just need the funds to get it started.
Ocean temps get lowered, global temps stabilize, methane deposits stay frozen. Everyone wins.

They should just develop carbon air sucking technology and combine them with farms. Put plastic bubbles around the crops, pump in concentrated CO2 from the atmosphere. Capture it with produce from the crops and expand farming with little energy.

Yay! Look at all those jobs! Then maintenance, and actually running the thing...

I briefly thought about trying to figure out how many new plants we would have to bring online per year, at current inceasing C02 levels, but I don't have quick and dirty access to data that wouldn't need a whole bunch of conversion. Plus, this was just a fun little thing to do while bored

So, we use electricity that's probably coming from a coal plant to run the carbon sucker? Sounds counter productive. Why not just plant fucking trees everywhere? You know, like to olden times? But I guess you can't make or fund your dumb research idea planting a tree. I bet the scientist who came up with this thing doesn't even know HOW to plant a tree.

"There are many critics of air capture technology who say it would be much cheaper to perfect carbon capture directly at fossil fuel plants and keep CO2 out of the air in the first place.
Among the skeptics are Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior research engineer Howard Herzog, who called it a "sideshow" during a Washington event earlier this year.
He estimated that total system costs for air capture could be as much as $1,000 per ton of CO2, or about 10 times the cost of carbon removal at a fossil fuel plant.
"At that price, it is ridiculous to think about right now. We have so many other ways to do it that are so much cheaper," Herzog said."https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/switzerland-giant-new-machine-sucking-carbon-directly-air

its cheaper to clean up the emissions and plant trees/lower deforestation.

Anyone know what the carbon footprint of the carbon sucking machine is? Net positive or negative? It has to use power from somewhere made by something.

Think the tree planting thing is better. Less maintenance and the critters are a nice side benefit.

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Not only from operating it, but there will be an initial carbon footprint manufacturing them and if you go far back enough in the chain, there is a carbon footprint in mining and processing the materials used to manufacture the devices. Transporting them also adds to the carbon footprint. Eventually though, the amount of CO2 it sucks in would surpass the amount used to manufacture, transport, and operate it- or so I think. It would be useless if it generated more CO2 than it takes in from operation. They could always lessen it by using the device with renewable energy sources.

They are pumping it into vegetables which is irony because as veggies decompose, whether in the body or not, it releases the Carbon back into the atmosphere (CH4 and CO2). At least with more trees it stays trapped in the trees until the tree dies & decays on the surface, or is burnt. But a good bit of the coal pulled up today comes from plants that were trapped under ground after they died.

"The new plant is intended to run as a three-year demonstration project, they said. In the next year, the company said it plans to launch additional commercial ventures, including some that would bury gas underground to achieve negative emissions."

From the article: "Climeworks says its venture is a first step in their goal to capture 1 percent of the world's global CO2 emissions with similar technology. To do so, there would need to be about 250,000 similar plants, the company says."
So they need 250,000 of these for 1% offset. Yeah, I'm still laughing.